Real wealth and experimental cooperation: experiments in the field lab

This paper explores how wealth and inequality can affect self-governed solutions to commons dilemmas by constraining group cooperation. It reports a series of experiments in the field where subjects are actual commons users. Household data about the participants' context explain statistically t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of development economics Vol. 70; no. 2; pp. 263 - 289
Main Author Cardenas, Juan-Camilo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.04.2003
Elsevier
Elsevier Sequoia S.A
SeriesJournal of Development Economics
Subjects
Collective action
Common-pool resources
Cooperation
Development economics
Development studies
Experiments
Field experiments
Game theory
Groups
Inequality
Local commons
Studies
Wealth
D63
Q2
D31
Field experiments
Local commons
O13
Q15
Cooperation
Collective action
Common-pool resources
C93
Inequality
Wealth
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:This paper explores how wealth and inequality can affect self-governed solutions to commons dilemmas by constraining group cooperation. It reports a series of experiments in the field where subjects are actual commons users. Household data about the participants' context explain statistically the usually observed wide variation found within and across groups in similar experiments. Participants' wealth and inequality reduced cooperation when groups were allowed to have face-to-face communication between rounds. There are implications for a greater awareness of nonpayoff asymmetries affecting cooperation in heterogeneous groups, apart from heterogeneity in the payoffs structure of the game.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0304-3878
1872-6089
DOI:10.1016/S0304-3878(02)00098-6